Tet dishes offer taste of past New Years

Tet dishes have special significance as they reflect the Vietnamese
tradition of each family member expressing their personal progress,
happiness and professional prosperity through the tray of dishes.

But
more importantly, children and grandchildren get a chance to sit with
their parents and grandparents, no matter which part of the world they
have returned from, and reminisce about old stories from their childhood
and greet each other a Happy New Year.

Despite the festival of
Tet (Lunar New Year) and its dishes holding such beautiful significance,
its significance has somehow gotten lost in the modern times because
many people, particularly the youth, have lost either their confidence
or are too lazy to cook. They claim that everything is available in the
market or can be delivered at their doorstep.

Nguyen Thi My, 72, in Hanoi's Old Quarter of Hang Dao Street, said "the
Tet festival now is quite different from the one celebrated in the past.
I am still unable to forget the old timey Tet. All families would be
busy preparing dishes, particularly a tray of food for worshipping their
ancestors."

"Except buying beef and pork pies
and ingredients, such as green bean and pork meat to make banh chung
(square cake), we cooked almost all the other dishes very carefully
ourselves," My pointed out.

At present, very few
people cook banh chung and traditional dishes, such as frozen meat or
che kho sweetened porridge made from green beans and sugar and instead
they buy these dishes in the market or supermarkets, she said.

"Although,
I have tried to keep up with traditional cooking, it has been lost with
the passage of time as all three of my married children buy many of the
dishes, including banh chung from the supermarket for our Tet party,"
she added.

Bui Thi Hang, 68, in Hanoi's Hai Ba
Trung District, agreed with My, saying she also liked preparing dishes
for the New Year holidays and her family in the past because apart from
enjoying the dishes, family members, some of whom visited from foreign
countries, came closer to each other and understood their
flesh-and-blood relationships and the values of life better.

Hang
expressed her pity for the youth, who do not have a chance of seeing
their parents or grandparents wrap banh chung or anxiously wait for a
bit of leftover sticky rice to get the chance to wrap a small one
themselves.

"These days it is so different from
the past. My female friends and I were often asked by our parents to
learn how to wrap and cook banh chung. Young girls now seem to forget to
learn any domestic skills (housework, cooking or needle work). In fact,
many of them do not know how to even to cook a traditional dish," Hang
said.

Nguyen Phuong Hai, a food expert said he prepared Tet
dishes very carefully, right from choosing the ingredients a month or
more before Tet comes, and cooked real traditional dishes, served in
eight bowls and six plates.

"I always try my
utmost to teach and urge my students to keep traditional Tet dishes
alive by cooking at home," said Hai.

Meanwhile, a
group of five from Switzerland, led by expat Vietnamese Duong Le Tinh,
who arrived in Vietnam this week to tour the northern provinces of Cao
Bang, Lang Son, Tuyen Quang and Ha Giang, had another choice.

They planned to welcome the New Year with traditional Tet dishes at Quan An Ngon in the capital.

Tinh revealed that immediately after their arrival, the group visited
a shop, where they witnessed an artisan wrapping banh chung.

"The shop offered us six traditional Tet dishes served in six bowls.
We enjoyed the cake, served with pickled onions very much," Tinh told
Viet Nam News.